More than a year has passed since CityFibre, supported by civil engineering firm J. McCann & Co Ltd, began the £45m rollout (here) of a new gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based broadband ISP network in the city of Derby (Derbyshire, England). The good news is that the first customers are finally going live.
The operator, which aims to cover “nearly every home and business” in the city (they usually target around 85% of local premises), has so far managed to cover 8,000 premises (i.e. the build has completed across parts of Mackworth, Allestree, Mickleover, Littleover, Abbey, Arboretum and Darley).
All of this forms part of CF’s wider £4bn programme, which aims to cover 1 million UK premises with their FTTP network by the end of 2021 (over 650,000 have already been reached) and then 8 million premises are expected to be “substantially completed” across 285 cities, towns and villages – c.30% of the UK – by the end of 2025 (here). But CityFibre could soon extend this target to 10m premises (here).
In Derby, the entire build is also due to be completed in 2025, with full fibre services now being offered via packages from several UK ISPs including TalkTalk, Giganet and Air Broadband (more will follow).
Dominika Walker, CityFibre’s City Manager for Derby, said:
“It’s a year on since we first started digging in Derby and it’s great to be able to celebrate this milestone by offering members of the community all the benefits full fibre connectivity brings. We would like to thank residents across Derby who have been extremely patient with us as we have built our infrastructure and look forward to giving more people in the area the opportunity to connect to our network, unlocking unbeatable homeworking, home learning and digital entertainment experiences.”
The operator’s main competition for gigabit connectivity in Derby is Virgin Media, which already covers the vast majority of local premises, while Glide and Openreach also have a bit of FTTP in some areas.
Air Broadband has been live in Derby for nearly 3 weeks now and busy signing people up – so slightly old news!!
Already connected and receiving close to gigabit speeds
800/800Mbps Down/Up
I thought Air Broadband was offering 1000Mbps/1000Mbps?
Why do they need to dig everywhere up again ? Surely smart sharing of BT / Nunez / Virgin / CATV ducts could have saved much work & money.